


Love and Life

by shipatfirstsight



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angsty-Ben, F/M, Fluff, Post-Canon, Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 14:25:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6054889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipatfirstsight/pseuds/shipatfirstsight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben Solo is exiled for his crimes against the galaxy. Rey--for reasons unknown, even to herself--volunteers to take him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love and Life

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the song "We Found Love." I took a world and some creatures from the expanded universe, but I'm sort of using them for my own purposes. Enjoy!

When the war is over and the Resistance has won, Rey returns to the new resistance base with Kylo in tow. She’s not sure she can call him Kylo anymore, though. He helped her kill the Supreme Leader after all, had fought through his Knights side by side with her, an odd ease to their movements when they fought together instead of against each other. He had even willingly gotten on the Falcon with her and had offered no complaint as she navigated back to the Resistance base.

He offered no fight when troops took him into custody and led him to the prison compound. Rey knows it would be very easy for fight back and escape, taking his lightsaber back from the pouch slung over her shoulder. She doesn’t visit him in the prison, but she is so aware of his presence. She feels like she’s fighting every second of every day not to go and at least catch a glimpse of him. It’s not a feeling she’s entirely comfortable with.

She feels lonely, purposeless. Finn and Poe have each other, and she couldn’t be happier for them, but she feels left out. Leia and Luke both have other concerns—concerns she can’t help with. She’s not a politician and she doesn’t have years of experience helping people. And through it all, Ben’s presence calls to her. It would be nice, she knows, to have someone to talk to, for both of them. She’s not sure though; it’s so easy to forgive him now that he’s helped her, and she can’t let herself forget all that he’s done. So she stays away, maintaining her resolve. It’s better this way, she reasons; better to not get too close to him. It can’t possibly end well.

She feels so alone, though. She thought she was done with that feeling when she decided to not go back to Jakku, but still, she feels so alone. They only time she didn’t feel alone was when she was fighting Kylo, and she can’t have that anymore. She hates it—hates that she feels more comfortable around him than she feels around anyone else. So clearly, she has to stay far away from him, no matter how much she wants to go and find him.

Rey hears, second hand, that the new Republic Council has decided to hold a trial for him. She expected it, but still a horrible sensation settles in the pit of her stomach when she hears. She’d spent so many years fighting him, never able to strike the killing blow—she was no longer really sure she wanted to see him dead—, and she wasn’t sure she could stand by and watch someone else execute him. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that, she reasons. She hopes wildly, and she’s not sure why she wants him to stay alive so much.

In the end, Ben Solo is exiled. It’s not a surprising verdict with the way the trial had been going, though many people resent it because they’d rather see the monster that was Kylo Ren dead. Rey can feel it, can feel the hate and anger and hurt rolling off the surrounding Resistance members in waves. But the council takes pity on General Organa. Rey, who was in the room where they deliberated even though her decision weighed nothing in the discussion, heard them say as much. Leia had lost too much to this war and they would not remove her son permanently from her life when she’d just gotten him back. He’s offered a small amount of clemency because of whose son he is.

They might as well have sentenced him to die. Despite her elation that she doesn’t have to _see_ him die, Rey thinks it would have been better than to sentence him to spending the rest of his life alone on a planet where the only other living things will want to kill him. She can’t help but remember her own childhood. She felt alone even though her planet had people, some of them not entirely horrible. He would have no one, only himself for however long he lasted. And that was _if_ he and whoever got stuck with taking him to Tython survived the trip without the benefit of hyperlanes.

Leia certainly doesn’t look comforted when the sentence was read. She leans heavily on her brother’s arm, and Rey could see her clenching her fists hard enough that her nails had to be digging into her skin.

This was worse for her and Rey thinks it’s cruelty—if not to Ben, then to Leia. The General had prepared herself for the order of execution—and it would have been carried out quickly. It would have been over with. Now, she has to live with worry, always wondering _when_ her son will finally die and Rey wonders why the council couldn’t see that. Leia looks smaller than she ever has, and for the first time, Rey is truly worried about her. The war had given Leia something to fight for, a distraction from everything she had lost, and now Rey can just imagine her spending most of her time worrying over her son.

Maybe that’s why Rey volunteers to take him, the words coming out of her mouth before she even considers them. It was a reflex more than anything; the council sentenced him to exile, asked for volunteers to take him, and her hand shot up, the words, “I’ll do it,” leaving her mouth without hesitation. Everyone looks at her in surprise when she speaks up, a few with anger and distrust—everyone but Ben, whose eyes remain completely fixed on the ground, his hair covering his face from view. She could sense him though, questioningly pressing against her mind, wondering why she would risk her life _for him_ when she could finally just be done with him forever. She bats him away. He didn’t need to know her reasons before she had a chance to process them.

It would be safer not to send him with someone who didn’t know him, she supposes—reasons, really. She’s not sure if she thinks it would be safer for the pilot or for him. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. But it has nothing to do with whatever connection she feels for him. Nothing at all, or at least that’s what she tells herself.

The council agrees, readily. “You leave tonight,” the lead member intones, bored, and she half wonders if they expected this, or wanted her to be the one to do it. She wonders if no one had volunteered if they would have sent her with him anyway.

She goes to her room when the council chamber is dismissed, not sparring Ben another glance. She’ll see enough of him, she knows, in the coming trip, and all she wants to focus on right now is getting ready to leave. Her room doesn’t have a lot she wants to take. It only takes one pack to fit everything she wants to bring—some clothes and his saber are tucked in and that’s it—there’s barely anything else in the room. She slings her own saber staff over her shoulder, and grabs a blaster for good measure, tucking it beside his weapon. She spares the room that’s been her home one final glance, and then she leaves.

Quite a crowd has gathered in the landing bay by the time she finds herself there. Crates of supplies—water and food rations—stand by, ready to be loaded onto a ship. Ben stands, surrounded by guards off to the side. His head sting hangs low, and she wishes he would just _look_ at her. He’s not wearing a prison uniform anymore, she notices, but he’s not wearing his usual regalia either. Someone, Luke or Leia she supposes, has given him brown Jedi robes. It looks out of place and right on him all at the same time. She nods to the guards, motioning them away.

“Come on then,” she says to Ben, jerking her head toward the Falcon. She pivots, walking in the direction of the ship, not checking to see if he’s following her.

A council member stops her before she’s taken ten steps. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To my ship,” she replies, moving to walk around him.

“Absolutely not. It’s a historic artifact, we can’t risk,” the man stops, rethinking his words at her pointed glare. “Well, I’m sure you’ll make it, but you’ll make it without the Millennium Falcon.”

She considers arguing with him about it, but she deflates. It’s probably not worth it, she realizes. “Fine,” she growls out. “Which ship are we taking?”

The man signals to another ship, and she notices now that it’s the ship being loaded with the crates of supplies. She nods, moving in that direction. Leia and Luke are there, standing to the side. Leia approaches her, “Let me say goodbye to my son,” she says in a quiet voice. Rey nods, moving toward her Master.

“Be safe, Rey,” he says without preamble. He hesitates, looking at his sister and nephew. “May the force be with you.”

“May the force be with you,” she murmurs back, and notices out of the corner of her eye Finn and Poe waving at her, BB-8 poking out from behind their legs. Luke dismisses her with a nod, moving to join Leia and Ben. She walks to her friends.

“Rey, what were you thinking?” Poe asks, his arms crossed over his chest, concern marring his brow.

“This is dangerous,” Finn tacks on, mirroring Poe’s stance and facial expression. “You know _if_ you make it to Tython, you probably won’t make it back?”

“You’ll be stuck there with _him_ ,” Poe spits the ‘him’ part out, glaring at Ben behind her.

She sighs. “I know it’s dangerous. But I’m a damn good pilot, and I can handle Ben.” She moves forward, hugging them both at the same time; she’s going to miss them, she realizes, no matter how long she’s gone. “Don’t worry about me.” Rey gives them what she hopes is a reassuring smile as she walks away. BB-8 rolls forward to follow her, but she smiles sadly down at the little droid. “Not this time, BB-8. Stay with Poe.”

Leia walks over to her, meeting her halfway. She pulls Rey into her arms, hugging her tightly. “Thank you,” she whispers, smiling softly. “Thank you.”

“I’ll get him there alive,” she promises, touching Leia’s shoulder as she moves out of her arms and closer to the ship.

“Why are you doing this?” Ben asks, low and soft, completely unsure and completely unlike the voice he’d assumed as Kylo Ren, when she comes up beside him.

She doesn’t answer, just pushes past him to the ship. The aptly named _Navigator_ is smaller than the Falcon, but only just. It’ll serve their purposes. She moves to the cockpit and sits in the captain’s chair, setting her saber and pack down on the floor by the seat. She hears Ben enter the room behind her, hesitating in the doorway. “Come on then,” she says, patting the copilot’s seat.

He rushes to the seat, and nearly trips into the chair. She buckles in, waits for him to do the same, and with a flip of a few switches and a push of the thruster they take off, and she waves down at her friends. They exit the base, entering the atmosphere and she enters hyperdrive. They’ll fly until they run out of hyper lanes. Ben is a surprisingly good co-pilot, knowing what she wants him to do before she gives voice to her instructions.

“I’ve been flying since before I could walk. Han—my father taught me,” he says to her unspoken question. “Besides, you know force users are naturally good pilots.”

She nods, settling back in the seat and turning it to face him. He looks at her for the first time that day; the bags under his eyes are more pronounced then they usually are and his face looks gaunt. “I didn’t know he taught you,” she says with a shrug of her shoulders. He could have said that first, could have led with the force sensitivity reason, but he started with Han teaching him. It feels important.

He sighs, looking towards the viewport. “My mother didn’t want him to. But I begged him to. Every time mom went away on a diplomatic mission, he’d take me to the Falcon and have me fly it,” he stops, laughing at some memory. “My dad’s friend—Lando—found out and told on him to mom. She was so mad, until I showed her that I could fly it already.”

“That’s a nice memory to have,” Rey began, smiling softly at him, “It’s nice that he taught you.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, before sadness crossed over his face. He hesitates, and then pushes out of the chair. “I’m going to go get some sleep,” and on that note he left without sparing a single glance in her direction.

She knows he really just wants to be alone—doesn’t want her to see whatever emotions he’s going through—and that he probably won’t get much sleep. So she respects that. She’ll leave him alone with his thoughts for now. There’s not much to do in deep space alone, though, and she’s suddenly so tired, the weight of the day’s events crashing into her. She doesn’t even really want to leave the chair. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but she still falls asleep quickly.

As she sleeps, she dreams things that are more memories than true dream creations, horrible things she never wanted to remember.

* * *

 

_Rey is not quite ten years old when she realizes just how alone she is in the world. It's not any one thing, really, not a sudden epiphany that dawns on her. The knowledge is gradual and it builds and it builds until one day, she just_ _knows_ _with a maturity and clarity that belies her age. Another scavenger steals her food that day, and Unkar does nothing to stop it, nothing to help her when he knows as well as she does that she could go hungry for days if she finds nothing else useful to trade. And she's_ _angry_ _, really and truly angry deep into her bones. It fills her up, makes her feel so much more powerful than she should. She takes up her staff, which she's had forever but never had the chance to actually use, and tracks the thief down._

* * *

 

Rey is watching herself go through these things in her dreams, and she can’t wake up—can’t stop what happens next.

* * *

 

_He's not hard to find. He's bragging to his friends about how he managed to get thirty portions off of a little girl. Hearing him talk does nothing to quell the rage building up in her. She walks up calmly behind him though, quiet on her little girl feet, and sweeps his feet out from under him. That strange power expands as she looks down at his shocked and angry face; his friends seem too shocked to move to help him. For one horrible moment, all she wants to do is end his miserable excuse of a life so he can’t do this to anyone else. It would be so easy, she realizes, to end his life, and with him down on the ground and her standing, she feels like she has all the power. It scares her, how easy it would be, how much she wants to do it._

_Instead, she gives him a good whack to his nose with the end of her staff. The hit doesn’t hold any of the force that she wants to use, but she still has the satisfaction of hearing his yelp of pain. Blood drips down his face between the hands he has pressed to his nose. She leans down, stealing his pack where it landed on the ground and she runs._

_When she gets back to her home, she empties the contents of her stomach across the sand. She digs a hole, methodically, when it seems there's nothing left to come up, burying her throw up. She can't even eat the portions she won back, plus the ones he himself had earned—fifty in total. She feels sick every time she looks at them. Three days later, hunger wins out and she eats the portions, trying not to remember the man's bloody nose._

* * *

 

She shakes herself awake, her breath coming in harsh gulps. She looks around, orienting herself, remembering that she’s not on Jakku anyone. And she’s not alone—she can feel Ben’s presence right down the hall. She settles back in, closes her eyes and lets sleep take her again.

* * *

 

_When she's thirteen, another scavenger tries to take her food. She’s had more practice now at both fighting and control. She doesn’t want to really hurt him, she just doesn’t want to lose her food because they’re her rations and she won’t lose them to anyone again. Anger keeps her alive, keeps her safe, because no one else will. Rey hits him too hard, though, square in the chest, and he falls against the sunken metal hull of a ship, his neck hitting the edge with a sickening crack. She rushes to him, hands shaking; she knows how to check for a pulse, but she can’t find it, why can’t she find it. But she knows, she knew the minute she saw him fall back. He was dead, and she was the one who killed him._

_She throws up—having the small will to turn her head and move slightly away from the body before spilling her guts across the sand. She runs again, leaving him there, but not before taking back her rations and finding his small stockpile of rations—fifty, more than she’s ever seen at once. He has an old holopad too, and she takes it, fully intending to trade it for more rations for herself. She runs, past her hose and back into the desert. It’s not that she’s guilty, it’s that she hardly feels guilty at all._

_Jakku has made her hard—and suddenly she’s angry with her family for doing this to her, for turning her into someone who kills other people to survive. But she pushes that anger away. She can let herself be angry with everyone else, but she can’t let herself be angry with them. Rey’s angrier with herself than anyone really; she should have been more careful with her hit, and she’ll be more careful next time._

_Unkar finds out. He seems to know everything that happens on the planet, and he’s angry with her for killing one of his best scavengers, and he doesn’t care how accidental the death was. It’s the first time he has his group of cronies beat her. She’s left black and blue all over, with at least a few broken bones, and she can’t scavenge for weeks. And all she can think is that she was lucky the man she killed had so many extra packets on him._

* * *

_The scavenger isn’t the last man he kills, though he is the first. Rey hates it more every time she does it. As she gets older, it seems more like she has to do it; the people that try to steal from her are more aggressive, or they attack her instead of just trying to take her food. She’s not the only scavenger to kill people; that’s just Jakku. They’re all wary of each other—they’re all struggling to survive. But she feels something every time she does it, every time she gives into the anger that festers inside of her, some dark power begging to be used._

* * *

 

_She’s fourteen when she kills someone on purpose. She’d gone two weeks with only a single portion. Her speeder wasn’t working, and she couldn’t get to the good ships to scavenge. She was so hungry. It was all she could think about. All she wants is a portion—Unkar won’t give it to her no matter how much she begs, promises that if she just gets food, she’ll find him new materials. He denies her. She sees someone get forty portions as she’s leaving for one hunk of metal, and it’s so unfair, that this time, in a horrible facsimile of the first time she drew blood from another person, she follows him, waiting until they’re out of town to strike. He fights back, landing a punch to her face. He draws a knife on her, holding it to her throat. That’s when she knows, either she’ll have to kill him or he’ll kill her. Somehow, she wrestles the knife from him. When it’s over, portions in her hand, she doesn’t get sick for once._

* * *

 

_When she’s fifteen, she has quite the reputation. Everyone leaves her alone, and she’s pretty sure Unkar warns people away from her. It’s a lonely existence she leads. She knows she did it to herself, at least in part, but oh it wasn’t just her actions to survive. It was Unkar and his stupid, unfair system that made surviving a game of chance and she was always so hungry—if there was anyone she wanted to kill, it was Unkar. And on the darkest, loneliest nights when the hunger gnaws at her and all she wants is something to eat, she lets herself be angry at her family. All she really wants, though, is for her family to come back and take her away from this place so she can stop being…this. She doesn’t feel like this was who she was meant to be. Rey tries to justify it—she’s just doing what it takes to survive, after all, but it sucks that it’s what she has to do to survive._

* * *

 

_"You would be brilliant if you just gave into your anger,” a man in a mask whispers, soft and seductive. And oh, she knows she would be._

* * *

 

_Someone is shaking her arm. She turns, ready to strike, ready to defend herself from whatever threat is behind her, but there’s no one there._

* * *

 

“Rey,” calm and firm, the sound of her name breaks through the haze of her dreams. She wakes with a start, looking into Ben’s eyes, his hand still shaking her arm softly. “It sounded like you were having a nightmare,” he says explains without any prompting.

“I was,” she admits, wiping away the wetness she can feel on her cheeks, embarrassed that he’s seeing her like this. “I’m sorry for waking you up.”

He shakes his head at her, “I wasn’t sleeping anyway. Don’t worry about it.” He gets up from his crouch beside her, looking ready to exit the room, and she’s not sure she wants to be alone with her thoughts right now.

“I did things on Jakku that I can’t undo,” she blurts out, and he stops, turning back into the room and walking over to her.

He nods, silently, and suddenly she wants to tell him everything even though she hasn’t yet found the courage to tell anyone else what she went through on that planet. If anyone should listen without judgment, it would be him. But she doesn’t, she just pats the chair next to hers once more. “I don’t think either of us are going to manage to get much more sleep tonight.”

Ben rejoins her, settling back into the chair with a sigh. “Probably not.”

Rey knows she’s nervous—they have nothing to do but wait for the hyperlanes to end and its nerve racking. They sit for a while, almost two hours if her internal clock is right, trying to one up each other in knowledge about their ship before a lull of silence settles over them. Her foot taps against the ground until he reaches out, placing a hand on her knee before quickly retracting his hand when she looks at him in shock.

“I can feel—I don’t understand why you came if you’re so afraid,” he says quietly, something like hurt entering his voice.

“I’m not afraid of _you_ ,” she tries to reassure him. “I’ve never flown without hyper lanes and I’ve heard the rumors about Tython.”

“They’re just rumors,” he says, but it doesn’t sound like he believes it. “And if they’re not, you can take care of any flesh raiders that come our way.”

“I’m sure you’re just as capable,” she blurted, though something in her preened at the complement.

“I seem to remember that I have no weapon,” Ben corrected spreading his hands wide.

She rolls her eyes in his general direction before swiveling the chair around and rooting through her pack. She finds his saber quickly; she notices, not for the first time, that it’s heavy in her grasp. It’s an odd saber with none of the fine, time-honed precision of Luke’s, or Anakin’s, or her saber. She turns back to him, pressing his weapon into his hand. “Don’t kill me in my sleep.”

He looks back and forth between her and his weapon, a small smile crossing his face. “Thank you.”

“You made it yourself?” she asks, even though she already knows that he did. She’s desperate, though, for conversation. Rey doesn’t want to be left alone with her thoughts right now. She doesn’t want to think about the things she dreamed of.

“Yeah,” he confirms. “After, after everything. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s Vader’s crystal, you know? And it’s cracked so it didn’t work right with the traditional design. I had to use an older model to have the cross guards to take the pressure off the crystal. I was so proud of myself when I figured it out,” he pauses, looking ashamed. “I almost yelled for my mom or Uncle Luke or even my dad to show them that I’d done it, but then I remembered.”

“You’re much more reflective now than you were as Kylo,” she notes, trying to divert his attention from his sad memories. It’s selfish, really, because she can feel the despair rolling off of him in waves, and it bothers _her_ to feel it.

“If I was still completely Kylo, I’d slash some equipment to work through my feelings instead of talking about then,” he confesses.

“Reflection is better in that case,” she laughs.

“I don’t think he’ll ever be completely gone. He was _me_. I’m still him. I can’t erase—my father, all those people—“ he looks like he’s panicking, his finger one move from igniting his saber and making good on destroying some equipment, and she can’t have him _doing_ that.

“Don’t do that,” she interrupts. He turns his face from her, sucking in a breath. She wonders how he can go from teasing to emotionally distraught in a split second. Rey wants to comfort him, but she’s not sure how.

“I killed my father,” he reminds her, but it’s the first time she’s ever heard him admit it out loud to anyone, at least not while admitting that Han was his father.

“You did,” she answers simply, truthfully. He doesn’t need her to sugarcoat it. “Do you regret it?”

He turns his face back to hers, a dull sheen of tears in his eyes. “Every day.”

“You’re going to have to live with it,” she says the words softly, trying to take away the sting.

“I know,” he sighs, rubbing at his eyes. “I don’t know how.”

Rey’s ready to try to offer some solution—some promise of help—but they exit hyperdrive at that moment, an alarm blaring. The readout says there’s an asteroid field, and isn’t that just her luck? The hyperlane is done too, lost behind them. “Let’s do this,” she murmurs.

They both buckle back in. He’s so self-assured when he grabs his side of the controls, completely different from the guilty man that had been before her only a few seconds ago. The asteroid field doesn’t give them much trouble—it’s not a storm, at least. It was just slow going. It could have been worse, though, she knows, and it might very well get worse before it got better. That was why she was nervous, after all; without the benefit of hyperlanes, there were no protections from pirates or any other dangers that hyperlanes shielded travelers from.

Rey presses forward to the edge of her seat, looking out the viewpoint for any sign of trouble. They fly slowly; she’s too nervous about any potential threats to risk reentering hyperdrive.

“No one’s out here,” his voice breaks into her concentration.

“You can’t know that,” she says stubbornly, keeping her gaze fixed out the viewport.

“Rey,” he says firmly enough for her to turn her gaze to him. “Use the force. There’ no one out here. That’s why they sent me out here. There’s no one for me to hurt out here.”

She does as he suggests, searching out—he’s right, annoyingly enough. She can’t feel anything. Not another ship, not another life form is anywhere close to them. It’s actually sort of sad. “Fine,” she grounds out, flipping the switch to reenter hyperdrive. “We’ll be there soon.”

“You know you’re under no obligation to stay with me once we get there?” he questions, seriously, and she can feel his gaze on her face.

“I know,” she says. “We’ll figure all that out when we get there.” She’s still not sure what she wants to do. She’s not going to give him false hope, because she’s sure he doesn’t want to be alone on a horrible planet, but she also doesn’t want to crush any hope he might have for her staying. She just doesn’t know.

They exit hyperdrive within two more hours; she’s surprised there was no actual trouble on the trip. They might have left on a good day, though, a day with no storms or pirate’s. Anyone, Tython was sure to present problems of it’s own. She navigates into the planet’s atmosphere, finding an open field to land in quickly. She expected it to be ash and ruin, but whatever the Je’daii left behind has changed over the years, green growing back up. Rey feels suddenly hopeful—maybe the flesh raiders, if they existed, were gone too. She unbuckles quickly with a smile, and Ben unbuckles as well.

“Let’s go explore,” she says excitedly, thinking that the council had made a huge mistake. Ben wasn’t going to have a hard time here after all, so their plan, whatever it had been, had obviously backfired on them.

A sudden explosion rocks the ship, sending her careening right into Ben’s hard chest. He grabs her, shielding her body as his slams into the floor. They both jump up quickly, her ears still ringing from the bomb. They run out of the ship. Sure enough, one side is on fire, a massive whole gaping through. It just had to be the hold of the ship too, where all their supplies were. She sees the fleeing beings from the woods, but makes no move to follow them. She’s torn between food and following the enemy.  

Ben is the one who tugs her back to the ship. They save what they can—two crates of water and three crates of food, using the force to aid them even as they cough their way through their small recovery mission.

“You don’t have to stay with me,” he reminds her when they’re back outside, sucking in the clean air.

“I’m pretty sure our ruined ship says otherwise,” Rey argues back, pointing toward the still burning metal, and she's happy that whoever ruined their ship intervened and forced her to make a decision. Now that it's been made, she finds herself almost...giddy. She doesn't have to go back and be alone; she can stay here with him and fight a new enemy. 

“You could fix it—or call for help,” he runs his hand through his hair as he says it, and she’s not sure what he wants at all—for her to leave, or for her to stay with him. He’s just as afraid as she was, she knows, and it has a lot to do with the uncertainty of the place.

“Oh, give it up Ben. You’re stuck with me now,” she stresses her point with a poke at his chest, moving past him. “Now come on. We need to find somewhere else to sleep.”

In the end, they decide to make camp under the wing of the ship that’s still in tact, at least for the time being. She settles on the ground, tearing into her food for the night, but Ben remains standing, looking out at the woods with suspicion.

“Could you be happy here with me?” she asks suddenly, even though she’s not entirely sure what happiness is, the wind whipping her hair into her eyes so she can’t see his reaction. But she feels when he lowers himself to the ground, taking her hand in his.

“It won’t be easy,” he says, rubbing his thumb over the top of her hand.

Rey turns to him, scooting her body closer to his. “When is it ever?” she asks, reaching up to cradle his cheek. He leans into her touch, closing his eyes, and she wonders when he was last touched without the person touching him trying to hurt or kill him. She pulls him, gently, toward her. When she presses her lips to his, it feels right.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! There should be at least one more chapter :) Sorry about any spelling/grammar errors. As always, I edit it myself and I'm sure I missed a ton of stuff.


End file.
